Untitled, Unmade Beds, 2021-2022, 29mm x 38mm, Giclée print on Hahnemühle Photorag
Unmade Beds
Unmade Beds is a project that explores the relationship Britain has with flora in a new rewilded age, through my own attempt to reconnect with nature. As councils struggle to even pay for essential services, and attempt to steer away from harm to the wider ecosystem, the city is changing. Verges and beds are left long enough for wildflowers to thrive, and weedkilling chemicals are kept in their bottles, as we hope that the bees will remain and save us from the seemly inevitable destruction of our only planet. Yet at the same time private developers are building complexes that play fast and loose with the idea of the green space, encasing the few trees they plant in concrete. When we attempt to escape the urban environment, the countryside of our leisure spaces becomes increasingly managed.
Rewilding has many interpretations across science, town planning and personal growth, but is frequently about relaxing our control and expectations of our environment. People’s reaction to the changes in their environment are mixed and intense, but nature refuses to care what we think. The inevitability of rewilding means we might all be better off readjusting our ideas of nature – of what is visually interesting, if not beautiful.
The work considers politics and economics, aesthetics and beauty, through a personal investigation of my own rewilding. It asks what nature is, and who defines it, and ultimately who controls it.